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Russia is being "increasingly aggressive" and is willing to use "propaganda, espionage, subversion and cyber-attacks" against countries including the UK, the head of MI5 has said.

In comments made in the first ever newspaper interview given by a serving MI5 boss in the 107 years since the security agency was founded, Andrew Parker said that although the fight against Isil could last a generation, it is vital not to ignore the growing threat from Russia.

Mr Parker's comments came in an interview with the Guardian, which could prompt criticism given his previously criticism of the newspaper for publishing the leak by CIA spy Edward Snowden of thousands of GCHQ files.

In the interview, Mr Parker warned that Russia is "at work" in the UK.

Russia has been a covert threat for decades. What's different these days is that there are more and more methods availableAndrew Parker

He said: “It is using its whole range of state organs and powers to push its foreign policy abroad in increasingly aggressive ways – involving propaganda, espionage, subversion and cyber-attacks.

"Russia is at work across Europe and in the UK today. It is MI5’s job to get in the way of that.”

Mr Parker said Vladimir Putin's Russia appeared to be defining itself ever more by "opposition to the west", in a policy that could be seen on the ground in Ukraine and Syria, but also increasingly in the threat of cyber attack.

Speaking in 2013 he said that the exposing of intelligence techniques by the newspaper through had given fanatics the ability to evade the spy agencies.

The Guardian published leaks from Edward SnowdenCredit:
The Guardian /AFP / Getty

He said: “It causes enormous damage to make public the reach and limits of GCHQ techniques.

“Such information hands the advantage to the terrorists. It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will.

“Unfashionable as it might seem, that is why we must keep secrets secret, and why not doing so causes such harm.”

Addressing those comments in his interview with the Guardian, Mr Parker said: “I spoke out at the time about the damage that was done to the work of British and allied intelligence agencies, about having so much about how we operate revealed to our adversaries.